Happy New Year! We are back, our month off was restful with the ability to stay at home but the museum stayed busy with delivery of things we ordered before we left. So we now have a shelf to put together, books to read and new merchandise to put in the gift shop. We now have shopping bags with our logo on them in bright colors of yellow, green, blue, and orange.

Ann and Dorothy have left for their southern respite and it will be quiet around here without them but we will be busy with new exhibits and writing grants. It is also time for membership drive, annual report, and taxes. Fun continues. The museum is in great shape and we are almost ready to begin our expansion thanks to each and everyone of you.

In the next weeks, I will be reporting on the annual report and the goals the board will be setting for 2012. Stay tuned.

HISTORICAL MUSINGS

In my last column before vacation, I wrote about Mrs. Alfred Wolf's balloon ride over Higgins trying to set an endurance record for women. Our local internet detective, LVK, researched her and discovered that she did set the endurance record on that flight. She also was the first woman to cross the Alps in a balloon in one day in 1962.

For more than 50 years, she set records for women. She wanted to fly a balloon from Center City Philadelphia to celebrate the anniversary of the first balloon flight in America, and she did.
She wanted to fly a balloon shaped like the liberty Bell for the 200th anniversary of the Constitution, and she did.
She wanted to fly a blimp, and she did.
She wanted to participate in a balloon race in the Netherlands, and she did that, too in a Navy surplus balloon she described as "mostly mildew and patches".

A fearless woman who survived a crash landing in a balloon and another in an airplane and was still piloting balloons and airplanes in her 80's. Balloons were her joy, her escape. She fell in love with them the day she took her first ride over Zurich in 1951, when her husband was stationed in Europe with the Air Force. In ballooning, she floated in a world of silence, borne aloft by a gas bag filled with hydrogen and with a motion so easy she had to watch a feather tied to the center of the gondola to see if she was going up or down.

When she set the endurance record, she stated she wanted to do "a deed for capitalism" to counter the effects of the Sputnik when it seemed the Russians were doing everything earlier, faster and higher than Americans. For more that 50 years, with her balloon records and her love of parties and people, Mrs. Wolf was a symbol in Philadelphia of spirit, independence, daring and grace.

It is nice to end one year and start a new one remembering a that a great lady once visited our area in her balloon on her way to making her mark in history.

I hope you will all enjoy this year with a bit of history, heritage, and heartfelt fellowship.